The Salad Bar for lunch

chrissywelsh10
chrissywelsh10 Posts: 66 Member
edited July 2017 in Health and Weight Loss
I heaped a load of veg into a small salad bar container. (7 inch circle)
Quinoa
Roasted courgette - with olive oil
chickpeas curried
boiled cauliflower
Shredded carrot
couscous
sunflower seeds
cucumber with dill
Sweet potato

Eaten half of it... and here is the rub... no way do I know how to log this.
I have eyeballed it & used some "starbuck roasted vegetable bowl" guides but I have no clue and I don't have a scale.

Logged as 475 calories (even though there is half left as i don't want to under log)

I figure I have to chalk this up to experience,... but at my work there is only the canteen and this salad bar, how do other people do this?... there must be a way to log it or things to steer clear off from a salad bar?

Any advise?
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Replies

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!

    Ya, this is how I'd do it - just make best guesses at quantities of each item.

    Also, after all this time, I kind of have a sense of how full I am after a certain amount of calories from certain types of food. If I log after dinner, I'll say to myself, yes, that did feel like 400 or 600 or 800 calories worth of food.
  • lilithsrose
    lilithsrose Posts: 752 Member
    edited July 2017
    When I eat a salad bar, I estimate my portions. The veggies are pretty negligible, so lets worry about the grains, seeds, chickpeas and sweet potatoes. Based on the size of your bowl, this is what I would likely think the portion sizes would be. But, that all depends on how much you put in of each ingredient. Remember, 1 cup of grains is roughly the size of a tennis ball.

    1 c. Quinoa - 225 calories
    1 c. Couscous - 175 calories
    1 Tbsp. Sunflower Seeds - 100 calories
    1/2 c. Chickpeas - 200 calories
    2 c. Veggies - 100 calories

    Total: 800 calories

    So, based on my estimates, if you only ate half of that, it would be around 400 calories.




  • pmyn29
    pmyn29 Posts: 130 Member
    Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!

    I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
  • susanp57
    susanp57 Posts: 409 Member
    pmyn29 wrote: »
    Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!

    I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.

    That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    yeah- quite probably higher...a good half of your list are calorie bombs.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    Find volume-based listings for the stuff you added and guesstimate the volume you added. The leafy greens, cauliflower, carrot, cucumber will be close to nil, but the other stuff is very calorie dense.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    Francl27 wrote: »
    I eyeball everything and log separately though. 475 seems low though, considering that there's seeds, potato, couscous, chickpeas, quinoa and oil.

    I read her post as she is eating and logging half now, and will do the rest later.
  • laurenebargar
    laurenebargar Posts: 3,081 Member
    Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!

    Yeah this is what I do too. Theres a grocery store down the road that has a hot food bar and a salad bar, so Ill get a salad and some roasted veggies. I just log each item (over estimating a little bit) separately. It hasnt impacted my weight loss thus far.
  • inertiastrength
    inertiastrength Posts: 2,343 Member
    edited July 2017
    Francl27 wrote: »
    I eyeball everything and log separately though. 475 seems low though, considering that there's seeds, potato, couscous, chickpeas, quinoa and oil.

    that's what I was thinking too
  • mangofish44
    mangofish44 Posts: 57 Member
    edited July 2017
    Salads are the move
  • SiegfriedXXL
    SiegfriedXXL Posts: 219 Member
    I brought my food scale to my office and weighed the individual components of my salad for about a week.

    Then, I added the individual components of my salad bar choices into MFP "my meals" as a work cafeteria salad.

    Now, I simply select this meal when I log on MFP, and it puts all the individual components in my diary. It's quick and easy to remove an item I didn't select that day, or to modify the weight of an item if I took more or less of it that day.

    It took some time to set up, but I eat a salad almost everyday at my work cafeteria. It was well worth the time invested upfront. It makes logging lunch much easier and more accurate. It's shocking how many calories are really in some salad bar items!

    I do this as well for our work salad bar. Just swap out the protein choice for the day. Veggies remain the same unless they're out of something.
  • Lillymoo01
    Lillymoo01 Posts: 2,865 Member
    susanp57 wrote: »
    pmyn29 wrote: »
    Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!

    I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.

    That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.

    Got a little experiment for you. Grab your scales, a cup and some flour. Get a cup of flour and pour it into a bowl and weigh it. Now grab another cup of flour and weigh it. Donit a number of times. You will rarely get the same weight. Now grab some frozen veges or something and do the same thing. Does a cup of frozen veges weigh the same as a cup of flour and how much difference are you getting from one cup to the next? With solids the volume can include a lot of air and you rarely put in the same amount each time.

    You should weigh all solids and only use volume for liquids regardless of whether you live in the US or elsewhere.
  • TheJourneyToFabulous
    TheJourneyToFabulous Posts: 381 Member
    BDonjon wrote: »
    Am I the only person wondering: "Your work has a salad bar?"

    Mines has a salad bar but it's full of mayonnaise and pastas
  • perkymommy
    perkymommy Posts: 1,642 Member
    I've found that any time I eat a salad "out" somewhere it will be much higher in calories. I don't know why but it always is. Unless it's just lettuce basically with cucumbers and tomatoes of course.